The Observation Deck

Top 3 Free Generator Tools to Create an Infographic Online

Infographics remain one of the best tools to disseminate and digest information.

Easel.ly remains our top pick because of its easy to use interface and large number of customizeable preloaded objects. Easel.ly allows users to either create an infographic from scratch or to use one of their templates.

Gliffy is a diagram generator with hundreds of free objects to manipulate into an infographic. However, Gliffy lacks templates that novice infographic creators would find useful. Gliffy is a powerful tool for creating infographics but first time users may need time to play around with the features before making a professional looking infographic.

Infogr.am is more suited for those who want to create infographics with charts. It allows users to input data manually or by Google spreadsheet and offers a large number of chart types ranging from basic line graphs to bubble graphs and word clouds. The downside is that infogr.am offers only 6 free templates.

Piktochart is another infographic generator that offers both free and paid versions. The free version has 11 templates to choose from as well as the option to make an infographic from scratch. Piktochart also has an extensive tutorial of its design application as well as a guide that demonstrates which type of infographic is best suited to the type of data being presented. Piktochart allows users with free accounts to export completed infographics as images, but requires users to upgrade if they want a higher quality image or pdf format.

Venngage is an infographic generator in the same vein as Piktochart. It offers free and paid versions, various templates, and tutorials of its website. Vengage offers users the ability to make charts either by manually inputting data or importing data from Google sheets. Vengage does not let users with free accounts export their pdfs, instead users must choose to share via social media or publish to Venngage’s community page.

Canva offers graphic design useful for making infographics on its website. The design application is easy to use and begins with a tutorial, however many of Canva’s images, backgrounds and layouts come with a price tag. Because of this, users may feel more limited in their use of Canva than in their use of the sites above.

We’ve all seen those long, information saturated graphics while surfing the web. I can almost guarantee that about half of you even thought about attempting to create your own because you are invincible and creative, right? Well, if you haven’t created that infographic and can’t afford the pricey fees of outsourcing the task to a professional infographic firm, like visual.ly, don’t worry. We’ve scoured the internet for the best infographic generation platforms available for free and put in the same information to all of them in order to test which one is the best. Here are our results:

Top Pick: Easel.ly

After analyzing generator after generator, Easel.ly is being dubbed the champion of the free online infographic generation platforms.

Easel.ly is loaded with hundreds of preloaded objects which can be easily customized and inserted into your infographic. With basic editing functions, it is safe to say you could have your youngest child create an amazing infographic for your business. I mean, what are child labor laws anyway?

Whether you don’t have the creative gene or simply don’t have time to create a theme from scratch, Easel.ly has your back. The platform contains a variety of customizable Vhemes (AKA visual themes), that can be turned into your own masterpieces with only a few clicks of the mouse.

A slight downfall with this platform is that you have to create a login before you can save and publish your work in their beta site.

Runer-up: Gliffy

Gliffy comes in at a close second to Easel.ly. Containing an extensive database of simple objects, it would be a great tool for anyone familiar with Microsoft’s Visio, as I feel the platforms are very similar.

Again, just like Easel.ly, you have to create an account before you can save your infographics. However, when you first sign up for the account you are in a 15 day free trial period that gives you many extras. One of those extras is the ability to collaborate with others. After the trial period, you can choose to stay with the basic free version and lose some of the features or you can pick one of their other pricing options ranging from $5 – 10 per month.

So you need to decide if the ease of use Gliffy offers outweighs the small monthly fee? (Or just forfeit a few of the features and use the basic free version)

Third Place: Infogr.am

Infogr.am is great if your aspiration is to create a smaller and more compact infographic with an awesome chart. Limited with only six infographic templates to pick from, your creativity is restrained. This downfall is counterbalanced with one of the best chart generators I have ever experienced. The library of charts has a range from the classic pie to the modern word cloud.

The only reason Infgr.am ranked lower than the others is because that awesome infograpic you just created can only be shared through social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc. Once you purchase the “Pro” version at $18/mo, then you are granted the ability to download the graphic in PDF or PNG format while gaining a whopping four more templates.

Honorable Mention: ICharts

It would be wrong for me not to leave you with a great chart generation platform discovered during this process.

ICharts is packed with an assortment of charts that will meet the needs of any type of data; however, the editing tools are more complex than the others sites that have been tested. Using the basic version will save you between $10 and $165 per month, but you are limited from many of the platform’s features and tools.

There you have it. The hard part of scouring the world wide web for the best infographic generation platforms is now done, so there are no other excuses left for you to use when deciding whether or not to make your next infographic idea. Happy creating!